Yes. You are able to upgrade or downgrade your hospital policy under Lifetime Health Cover without affecting your certified age at entry. The usual waiting periods and applicable pre-existing ailment rules will still apply.

The only circumstances under which your certified age at entry would be affected by a variation to your private health insurance cover would be if you changed from a policy that includes hospital cover to a policy that does not. In this case the period of absence rules would apply. That is, your certified age at entry would be unaffected for the first 24 months that you were without hospital cover, and would then increase by one year (2%) for every additional 365 days you did not have hospital cover.

People who purchase hospital cover for the first time after the 1 July following their 31st birthday will pay a Lifetime Health Cover Loading. This loading is based on the person's Lifetime Health Cover Age. The loading equals 2% for each year the persons Lifetime Health Cover age is over 30.

The Government understands that there are various reasons members may need to drop their membership for brief periods. Therefore, the Lifetime Health Cover rules provide members of health insurance who need to drop their membership, for whatever reason, a cumulative period of 24 months absence through their lifetime without affecting their certified age at entry. If you want to find out how much of your period of absence you have used, you should contact your fund.

If you are unsure how much loading you are paying, contact HICA on 1300 732 757, your health fund or refer to the annual statement that your health fund sends you detailing your Lifetime Health Cover status.

If in the future you decide to take up family or couples cover, there is no problem doing so.

The premium that you pay for your family/couples cover will take into account your certified age at entry as well as you spouse's certified age at entry. The couple or family premium is calculated by dividing the base rate premium by the number of adults on the policy and applying each adult's loading to their proportion of the premium.

So the loading you were paying on your singles cover will now be applied to your proportion of your new couple or family policy. For example, if you joined hospital cover before or during the grace period there would be no loading applied to your half of the family premium. Let's say your spouse, on the other hand, has never had health insurance in the past and has a lifetime health cover age of 40. They would pay a 20 per cent loading on their half of the family premium. If the premium for family cover is $1000, the health fund will put your half, $500, and your spouse's half, now $600 ($500 plus 20 per cent of $500 = $600) together and the premium for your family cover would be $1100.

Private health insurance overseas does not count towards Lifetime Health Cover. This is because any health insurance held overseas does not contribute to the support of community rating, as Australian private health insurance is required to do.

Community rating requires Australian private health insurance funds to charge everyone the same premium regardless of health status and claims history. This ensures that health funds can not charge the elderly and the chronically ill a higher premium.

The base rate premium is the price a person joining at the age of 30 would pay for hospital cover. This premium is set by individual health funds. The base rate premium will vary between different health fund products and between different health funds and may increase over time as a result of cost pressures such as new, expensive health technologies and the ageing of the population.